


Wherever the Railroad Ends

by lucio



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: F/M, Light Angst, Post-Canon, hades is a relatively good person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 07:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20336173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucio/pseuds/lucio
Summary: Eurydice presses her hand to her lips and lifts it to the distant ceiling, wishing all her useless wishes that Orpheus could feel her kiss. “Someday,” she promises the emptiness. “Someday.”Someday does not answer. But she feels it anyway, a silver lining threading through her mud-spattered skin.(Or, what happens after Orpheus and Eurydice lose each other, and the way they might find each other again.)





	1. Chapter 1

After the ground closes up over her, the first thing Eurydice hears is Hades’ rumbling voice:

“You’re here.”

She turns, unable to see him, the darkness both blinding and biting now that she’s glimpsed the light of day.

He makes a rustling noise and a torch springs to life, held up in his hand and playing across the crags in his well-worn face. Eurydice meets his gaze fearlessly. She expects anger—vindictiveness—anything, but the only emotion in his eyes is a weariness so deep it staggers her. “Do you know, songbird,” says Hades, “I thought you would make it out.”

Eurydice cannot answer him directly; she cannot bear to consider what she’s lost. “Where is he?” she asks instead. “Where’s Orpheus?”

“He is above,” Hades replies. “As you are below.”

When she does not answer this, either, he extends a hand. “Hadestown is a long way away,” he says.

“Why did you come?”

Hades’ hand lowers, just slightly. “I wanted to see how long you would last.”

“It isn’t over,” says Eurydice, in a rush of defiance at the pity in his voice. She doesn’t know what to do with a king’s pity—hates it, even—because Orpheus will find her, or she’ll find him, but either way they will find each other somewhere. “You know what he can do.”

“I do,” Hades agrees. “I know your pauper will not break his promise to me. Has he ever broken a promise to _you_?”

Eurydice’s eyes sting with tears. “Not yet.”

She is thinking of Orpheus’ words to her—that the wind would never change on them—and perhaps Hades sees some of this in her eyes. “Poets write sweet words, little songbird. And often, words are all they are.”

As oddly gentle as he is being, as if her Orpheus awoke a side of Hades even he had forgotten he’d lost, there is still an underlying steel in his voice that Eurydice is not fool enough to test. She takes his hand, reluctantly, and the miles melt away almost instantly beneath her feet.

Hadestown. Again. Her prison and her home, the place where she will spend the next forever. 

Eurydice presses her hand to her lips and lifts it to the distant ceiling, wishing all her useless wishes that Orpheus could feel her kiss. “Someday,” she promises the emptiness. “Someday.”

_Someday_ does not answer. But she feels it anyway, a silver lining threading through her mud-spattered skin.

-

After the ground closes up over her, Orpheus falls to his knees and stares.

”Eurydice?” he remembers saying, blood roaring in his ears, between his ears and behind his eyes as it chased all the doubt off the road in his mind.

Too late. Too late. Too late.

“Orpheus,” she had answered, his treacherous poet-mind offering up a thousand, no, a million words for how beautiful she looked in that second, emerging from the dark and framed by the light—

—only for her to disappear back into the shade, his desperate hands reaching for the girl he could not save.

_She called your name before she went_, said Hermes. It seems that she always does.

Orpheus kneels in the dirt, and ignores the spreading ache in his legs, and keeps vigil in the moonlight. He can look behind him at last, can take his fill of the view he so doubted he would see—now that there is nothing there, now that his Eurydice is gone.

-

An hour, maybe two, after Eurydice’s return, Hades invites her into his office. He says it’s to discuss her future in Hadestown, but she suspects it’s because he’s lonely.

“Where are the workers?” is the first thing Eurydice asks, as Hades closes the door behind them and takes a seat behind his desk. He extends a hand to the seat across from him, but she only shakes her head—she’s wary of that desk, even now—and Hades steeples his fingers in thought. Dread twists low in her belly at his refusal to answer. “Did you do something to them?”

“I gave them what they clamoured for,” Hades says. His fingers twitch. “If they crave their freedom so terribly, they can have it, their safety be damned.”

Eurydice just marvels at him. “You let them go.”

Hades is wearing the sunglasses that make it impossible to read his face, but at her words, he rips them off, so suddenly that she almost jumps. Behind them, his eyes are wild. “What king am I, that I should bow to the people’s demands whenever they change with the wind?”

“A good one?” Eurydice suggests, archly.

"Good kings do not obey their people's every whim," Hades shoots back. He sounds like he is trying to make sense of his actions to himself.

"But good kings _listen_."

Hades continues as if he hadn’t heard: “Everything I do is for her," he says. "Everything I _did_ was to please her.”

Eurydice looks at the king with the bowed head, and remembers a time when she envied him for his wealth. How silly her envy seems now. All the riches of Hadestown could not buy back Persephone’s love, she sees that now, and for all his walls and deals and workers Hades is still so completely alone.

“Build her something else,” Eurydice suggests. “Not a power grid, not a furnace. Something that reminds her of the sky.”

“The sky,” Hades muses. “Did you fly in it often, little songbird?”

For a moment Eurydice hears her Orpheus in her mind—she can almost see his long fingers strumming at his lyre—and thinks of the nights they spent curled under the stars, Orpheus humming the ground into softness beneath their feet. “I did,” she answers him. “But Orpheus was the one who gave me wings.”

Her words hang between them for a moment. Then Hades opens a drawer, and pulls out a sheaf of parchment and a gleaming black pen. “Tell me about the sky,” he says. “I do not see it often, and there is time enough to build one before fall.”

Eurydice smiles in spite of herself. She wishes fleetingly that Orpheus could see her as she steps closer to the wooden table: Eurydice, the hungry young girl, telling a king how to go about building a sky.

-

Orpheus realizes it is dawn when the sky begins to lighten above his head. Does Eurydice know that morning has come, he wonders, wherever she is in Hadestown?

Whether she knows of it or not, the sun brings a surging clarity to Orpheus’ mind. He should find a stream to refresh himself, he thinks, at least before he does anything else. Because Orpheus has his voice, and because it never occurs to him that he might be miles from the nearest source of water, he only has to ask the grass, “Where is she, my Eurydice?”, and his tears form a trickling river that runs out for him from the woods.

(When the sunlight first catches the water, he thinks at first that he sees gold; his voice sings out automatically, holding onto a note that will gather the bits into a ring for Eurydice’s finger. The song turns to ashes in his throat when he remembers he won't be needing it anymore.)

Orpheus drinks, and bathes, and wearily pulls his worn clothes back on, and that is when Persephone comes walking down the river. 

"Orpheus," she says softly. The edges of her green dress flap like twittering birds in the spring breeze. "We've been looking for you."

"I didn't want to be found," Orpheus answers. Now that a goddess is standing before him, though, his love for Eurydice is squeezing out all of his rational thought and overwhelming him with the knowledge that Persephone might—just might—be able to free her. "Lady Persephone," he begins, desperately, "could you-"

She raises a hand to stop him. "If I could, Orpheus, I would. But my husband will not bend his laws for you again."

He knew it was futile to try, but the words still hit him like a blow. This time, it really is true; Eurydice will never again see the light of day. "Let me board the train, then," says Orpheus. He feels so wrung out by grief that no course of action is too wild for him to try, no idea too far-flung to suggest. "Give me a ticket to Hadestown."

Persephone studies him with warm, tired brown eyes. "That I will not do."

"Please," says Orpheus. "I need her."

"You lost her," Persephone says gently. 

Whatever look comes into Orpheus' eyes, it must resemble the stirring agony in his bones, because the goddess takes one look at him and seems to relent. "Fine," she murmurs, almost to herself. "Wait until the fall, Orpheus, when the trees shed their leaves and I must return to my husband's domain. Meet me here, on a night when the moon is full and the leaves cover the ground, and I will fill your cup." 

"I will wait," says Orpheus, heart in his throat. "I'll be here."

"I know," answers Persephone. "I would have been too." 

Between one breath and the next, she is swallowed up by the rushing wind, and Orpheus takes up his lyre to declare—if only to himself—that he believes she'll return. "Wait for me," he says, strumming a familiar chord. It is not part of the Epic, his masterpiece, but it is one that has been running through his head for so long that a whole song comes tumbling after it: "Wait for me, I'm coming," he calls, and vows to the silent trees that the day will come when he doesn't need to wait anymore. 

Someday, whenever it is, gives no answer. But he feels it anyway, a promise that sings in tune with his lyre's hopeful melody. 


	2. Chapter 2

Seasons pass, and Orpheus wanders. 

He has always been a poor boy with a lyre, focusing only on his Epic, but he finds, as the sun grows hotter, that his lyre can play people's heartstrings too. It grows warm enough for him to fall asleep under the shade of an apple tree, looking up at the glittering sky, but not before he has regaled a dozen listening townsfolk with the story of he and Eurydice; somehow they seek him out no matter where he goes, paying him with tears on some nights and silver coins on others. Orpheus isn't playing for them, but he takes their coins and their sympathy anyway. 

People start to whisper about him when he enters new villages. They call him the muse's son, the gods-touched singer, Apollo himself reincarnated on earth, but none of them ever call him Eurydice's husband. They do not know him like she does. Like she did. So Orpheus sings for them, and sometimes he even speaks to them, but for the most part he keeps to himself. 

Time passes like that, until Mr. Hermes finds him again. 

It was never unusual for the god to disappear for weeks or even months on end, so to Orpheus it is only a welcome surprise to see Hermes' familiar face approaching from over the nearest hill. "Mr Hermes!" he cries, raising a hand to shade his face from the sun. "Where have you been?"

The god's face is grave. "To hell and back."

"Have you seen Eurydice?"

"I have." 

"How is she?" Orpheus demands. 

Hermes considers this. "She is well. As well as you can be, in Hadestown."

"Does...does she remember me?"

"She does," Hermes says. Relief and guilt threaten to knock Orpheus completely off his feet. "Sit down, and I'll tell you what I've seen."

Orpheus plops down in the shade of the tree, and though he is many years older and many years wiser, the position reminds him of countless hours he spent in much the same pose, listening to Hermes recount myths and legends of old. 'It's an old song,' Hermes always said before he started. And, indeed: "It's an old song," says Hermes now, smiling a little wistfully. "But I don't think I've heard the ending yet."

"Tell me how it goes," says Orpheus anxiously, and this is what Hermes tells him. 

-

It's not easy for mortals to visit Hadestown—they have to take the long way around and the hard way down—but for gods, it is not so difficult. Hermes only had to will it, and there he was, standing at the looming iron gates of a place he had hoped to never see again. But, at least, he is not a mortal man who must cower before Lord Hades. The lord came to say hello to him, instead. 

In his tow was Eurydice, looking as young and beautiful (if a little grimier) as Hermes remembered her.

"Brother," Hades rumbled, by way of greeting. "Your business doesn't usually bring you down here."

"No," Hermes agreed, not quite able to take in the sight of an unharmed and mentally functioning Eurydice. Perhaps Hades really _had_ changed, more than Hermes would have thought possible. "I'm not here on business."

"For your little singer, then?"

"Orpheus," said Eurydice, determinedly shaking off whatever fear she might have had at interrupting the conversation of gods. "How is he?" 

"Grieving," Hermes answered, watching his wife's face fall. "But he lives."

"Will you tell him that I love him?"

"You don't blame him, then?" asked Hermes, cocking his head. "For losing you?"

"No," Eurydice said, almost before he had finished asking. "But please, tell him that I love him." 

Hermes inclined his head. "I will."

-

Orpheus can't resist interrupting: "She loves me?"

"Sure does," says Hermes. "Apparently there's not much else to love down there, so I guess you'll have to do."

Orpheus just smiles, so brightly that Helios leans out of his chariot from where he's pulling the sun to see what could be so bright down among the trees. "She really does love me. Did you tell her that I love her, too?"

"Sure did," says Hermes. "And you'd know that, if you let me finish the story."

Orpheus subsides, an air of impatience about him despite his infectious grin, so Hermes resumes the tale.

-

"He can't stop writing songs about you, you know," Hermes told Eurydice, trying to soften the blow. "People come from all across the city-state to hear him sing about you."

Eurydice smiled, sadly. "Sounds just like him."

"How is Persephone?" Hades interjected, equally eager to hear news of his lover and much more brusque about it. "When will she be home?"

"She is making the people happy," replied Hermes. "And you know just as well as I when she'll be back here."

"You never know with women."

"But with _this _woman," Hermes said, "you said you were trying again." 

"What do you think I'm building this sky for?" Hades growled.

"The...sky?"

It was Eurydice who answered, eyes suddenly bright with mischief. "Come see what we're building for Lady Persephone!"

So Hermes stepped inside the gates, and he found that Hadestown was not really Hadestown anymore.

-

The story trails off here, Hermes pausing for so long that Orpheus has to say, "What was it like, Mr. Hermes?"

"It was beautiful," the god says. "There were flowers growing up from the dirt, and Hades left in just one of his huge lamps, bright enough to provide the light for them to grow. He couldn't open the town up to the sky, but the ceiling was covered with polished black ebony, as far as the eye could see. And your lover put in just enough of Hades' diamonds for the whole place to feel like being out under the stars."

"That sounds incredible," says Orpheus wistfully. Of course, he has no wish to go back underground anytime soon, but he can only think what Eurydice must look like, healthy and shining under a tapestry of diamond stars. 

"There's more."

-

Eurydice was only too excited to show Hermes around, pointing out the wall that is now bursting with ivy and flowers that twine up and around it, as if to apologize for its bleak whiteness. A few houses even sat beside the wall, its occupants having crawled back to Hades in misery when they could find nowhere to go and discovering a changed Hadestown from the one they left behind. Hades set them to building again, but this time, they were making houses for themselves, and gazebos for Persephone to sit within and look at the stars once she returned. Sometimes the workers sit inside it themselves, and Hades does not even seem to mind. 

Or, at least, this is what Eurydice told Hermes, who had no reason not to believe her. One look at the flower pinned to his label was enough to see that Hadestown was not the only thing that had changed underground.

-

"One more thing I should tell you, before I go," says Hermes, wrapping up his tale. "You've got a date with a goddess tonight."

"Oh!" exclaims Orpheus, so caught up in thoughts of Eurydice that he had almost forgotten Persephone's words. "Tonight?"

"Yes." Hermes smiles. "I think I know what she's going to show you, but I ain't supposed to spoil the surprise."

Orpheus jumps to his feet. "Thank you, Mr. Hermes! And please tell Eurydice I love her, if you see her."

"I ain't gonna be the messenger for your schoolboy crush, Orpheus," Hermes says, but he's smiling enough for Orpheus to know he'll pass on the message anyway. 

-

Persephone finds Orpheus just when she'd promised: the moon is full, and leaves are covering the ground in a rich tapestry of red and gold. Orpheus, who has been sitting under the same tree for hours, jumps to his feet when he sees the goddess coming. "Lady Persephone!"

"Orpheus," she says, smiling. "You're early."

"Of course I am," he answers. "What are you going to show me?"

Persephone nods to a particular clearing in the forest, one that Orpheus can just make out between the trees. "Do you see that?"

He nods.

"Go stand in the middle," says the goddess. 

He goes. 

So Persephone reaches out with both hands to the grass, concentrating all her godly powers on that single spot—Orpheus watches her with a frown, trying to decipher the meaning of her gestures—and then the whole clearing shudders beneath his feet, turning as transparent as the air around him so that Orpheus can see below. 

_Way _below. 

Through the rocks and mud and dirt, to where Eurydice, his beloved Eurydice, is staring back up at him.

"How..." Orpheus begins, all rational thought deserting him. He drops to his knees, places one hand gently on the ground, and below him, Eurydice shakes her head in amazed bewilderment, tears glistening in her eyes as she reaches out one of her hands to meet his. They don't touch, but it's almost enough. "How can I be seeing her?" asks Orpheus. 

Persephone steps closer. "There's a crack in the wall, down in Hadestown, and there are cracks in the ceiling if you know where to look. My husband has a few defences against mortals trying to see outside, but if I tug on the cracks just right, I can break it open a little."

"Thank you, Lady Persephone," Orpheus whispers, unwilling and unable to wrench his gaze from Eurydice. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," says Persephone grimly, spotting the husband in question entering their field of vision. Orpheus yanks his hand away as if burned, but Hades, surprisingly, doesn't do anything. He looks at Eurydice's outstretched hand, follows its trajectory to Orpheus' tear-streaked face, and skips to Persephone's expectant expression. 

He touches Eurydice on the shoulder, says something to her, and moves away. 

"He's different now," Persephone murmurs. "You did something to him, Orpheus, did you know that?"

Orpheus isn't listening. Persephone leaves him there and walks a little further, until Hades stands directly below her, head tipped up to look. His eyes seem to be asking why she never told him about this spot, why she never used it to look in on him and tell him she was fine when she had the chance. 

Persephone raises one hand and points deliberately at Orpheus. He needs it, needs Eurydice, much more than either of them have ever needed each other. 

Maybe that will change, though. Maybe, Persephone thinks as she looks down at her husband, she and Hades will rediscover their favourite foods and their favourite songs, and maybe she'll gasp when she reenters Hadestown and sees the changes he and Eurydice have wrought; maybe the three of them will dance under the stars, Eurydice humming Orpheus' tunes as Hades and Persephone sway to a rhythm of their own devising. Maybe Eurydice will spend hours sitting beneath the crack in the ceiling, watching Orpheus strum his lyre a thousand miles above, and maybe Hermes will tell each of them the other loves them whenever he pays his visits. Maybe Hadestown will become a place Persephone, and the workers Hades takes under his wing, don't actually mind coming back to every night. Maybe Persephone and Hades will make it the home she never knew they could have. 

Perhaps all of that will happen, someday. 

But someday will come when it comes, when the Fates will it to be true; right now the moon is full and warm, and right now there is Orpheus and Eurydice drinking deep in the sight of the other, and the stars are a silver lining in the night sky above, promising everything and nothing and, most importantly, a second chance. 


End file.
